


Hear, Feel, and Think, Sweetling

by Harpalyce



Category: Final Fantasy XIV, The Secret World
Genre: FFXIV character profiles, FFXIV roleplaying, Other, but it's Research and is therefore Almost Like Really Writing!, but writing the buzzing is fun, listen I don't have an excuse for this, you get to waste so much time looking up stuff on wikipedia, you should also write the buzzing. it's fun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-05-29 15:16:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19402957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harpalyce/pseuds/Harpalyce
Summary: TRANSMIT - initiate anima signal - RECEIVE - initiate the Scion sequence - WITNESS - our wisdom flows so sweet, Warrior of Light. Taste and see...(...listen i just wanted to write secret world style lore entries for my rp characters that's all i got fam)





	1. WITNESS: Calamity Janine.

TRANSMIT - initiate the amnesiac protocols - RECEIVE - behold the sun-baked and foam-arisen Cyprian - IN A TOWER OF STEEL - bubble the alembic to separate water and spirit - NATURE FORGES A DEAL - way, hey, and up she rises, early in the morning - TO RAISE WONDERFUL HELL - the angels will take their share from the barrels as ever - LIKE ME, LIKE ME -  and I will make thy pinnacles of rubies, and thy gates of carbuncles \- MY NAME ISOBEL - one sail too slack or sails too close to the wind? - MARRIED TO MYSELF - as Rahab, as Vasantasena, as the actress said to the bishop - MY LOVE ISOBEL - the wanderbird carried where the wind wills - LIVING BY HERSELF -

**WITNESS: Calamity Janine.**

-

Two miqo'te mothers visit a hill in the Black Shroud. One brings an armful of flowers. There must always be two bouquets, she says, because there are two graves. Two posies, two tombstones, two daughters. It is quiet as they stand there together silently. And then, one says: “Wherever she is, please, look after her.”

One miqo’te stumbles into a small shrine. She brings nothing but the fuzz on her teeth from cheap rum and the sense of guilt that’s a queer sort of hangover. Soon the good times will roll again, but now there’s just the fog rolling in to Limsa Lominsa. And she squints at the statue of Llymlaen, unsure how to interact with the Twelve, and says: “Wherever they are, please, look after them.”

They do not realize they are speaking about one another.

-

Oh, sweetling, it’s a pity that a carbuncle can’t speak. It’s a pity that aether focused through a gemstone can’t be clever enough for words. If it could, all the tales of seeing her summon it again and again would come pouring out of it. Pulling the cider press. Prancing for her parents. Doing tricks. Riding in the churn of the waterwheel to clear a blockage. Being instrumental to convince everyone that boat ride to Limsa Lominsa was a good idea, even breaths away from the Calamity.

The things it could say, sweetling. The truths it could share!

But aether does not make a fine tongue.

-

It’s a fine irony that the two sisters, one there in flesh and one not there at all, are together in mirrors in each scene.

That artificial soul in her book is not as artificial as anyone thinks. She just can’t remember. But it’s for the best - compared to a childhood, cut however short, in the green and lush woods, a tome will never compare. Despite never seeing one another, never sharing breath, they are still drawn to each other’s orbit. Like two planets, never touching, but always near.

The things she could remember, sweetling. But aether does not make a fine memory.

-

See the bootprints of one pursued by something, but not knowing what. See the bootprints of one searching for something, but not knowing what.

Isn’t it quite identical fernweh?

-

If you keep running forward, nothing can catch you. Not even the past. One project slides into the next. There’s always another goal. There’s always another deal. There’s always another new horizon. There’s always another adventure.

And even when they end, she doesn’t stop. They talk of her like a whirlwind, sweeping in and catching the whole room up with her even when she stops for something as simple as a drink. The smile, the jokes, the hearty laugh, the brilliant kindness, the bouncing cleavage. Everyone notices, even when pretending they don’t. Some notice to steer clear; some notice to turn into the bay despite the rocks. Lighthouses, sweetling, are surprisingly ambiguous.

-

It’s a kind sea that only has the occasional tempest. By morning she’ll raise anchor and set the mainsail to take herself out of the harbor. She’ll skim over the calm rolling, and lean into the favorable headwinds that will push her just where she wants to be. There’s fulfillment in that simplicity. She’ll look out from that crow’s nest and see each wave glorying in the gold the sun has given it, and she’ll know, she’ll be all right. She’ll be all right.

But that will still be after the few storms.

And up she rises, early in the morning…


	2. WITNESS: Roswynn Skarndoenwyn

TRANSMIT - initiate the mis en place protocols - RECEIVE - observe the pacifist berzerker paradox - WE HAVE A RECURRENT DREAM - set the heat to gas mark two - EVERY TIME WE LOSE OUR VOICES - O Vesta, if I have always brought pure hands to your secret services - WE DREAM WE SWALLOW LITTLE LIGHTS - remember to punch down after the first proof then set aside to rise - OUR MOTHER AND SON BAKED FOR US - blessed are those who look in the eyes of the abandoned - EVERY TIME I FEEL A HOARSENESS - and whatever you do, don’t open that oven door - WARM GLOWING OIL - everything that is edible, and passes under the hands of the cook, is more or less changed, and assumes new forms - IT MAKES ME FEEL BETTER - 

**WITNESS: Roswynn Skarndoenwyn.**

\--

A girl is born in the back rooms of a whore-house, on a bed far enough from the customers to let them believe the screams were for something pleasant. Her mother sees her strawberry-blonde hair and laughs in relief. And she is wrapped in a blanket already bearing her name.

“How did you know?” The makeshift midwife says, still in awe. “That you were having a girl, I mean?”

“I just knew.” She is lying, of course, but for a moment, she dazzles the other woman. Maybe even now, she also knows how exhausted she is, more than perhaps normal. Maybe even know that exhaustion is sinking into her bones to fester. Maybe even now she can feel it. “Take some gil from my coinpurse,” she says, gesturing out across the room. “Go to the docks, hire a messenger. When the Bloody Caress is next into dock, have them tell the captain that he’s got a daughter named Roswynn.” And with that, she feels as though she can finally relax.

A girl is motherless two weeks later.

\--

A girl pushes her grandmother up a hill. The wheelchair is harder to push in grass, but her Nan says it’s good training. They look out, down on Aleport, down at all the dockhands that the girl knows are so friendly to her.

A girl is starting to suspect they are so nice in part because of who her Nan is, or perhaps once was.

“Before you go off to boarding school,” her Nan says, adjusting the blanket over her legs. “There are some things you should know. About us, about our family. It ain’t anything too horrid, but you should know.” And she tells the girl about her legacy. It’s not anything, dear sweetling, as clear-cut as the inner beast; it’s not anything to get a proper name. No, it’s simply a reaver’s enthusiasm. And her Nan groans, saying she was too late to learn the lesson properly, not before age and injury made it quite clear, but that it was all for the best. Her father was always careful to be gentle, just as he was told.

A girl is told that sometimes, she may start, and be unable to stop.

A girl does not properly understand the warning.

\--

A girl clutches her bag to her chest and thinks of its contents.

She does not know, same as her classmates, that these are actors. She does not know that the bandit is actually the son of a famous actor in Ala Mhigo, who is bitter about not being given the spotlight he was born to inhabit. She does not know about how he’s settled for the occasional show along Pearl Lane. She does not know what fun he’s having chewing the scenery, acting the very part of the badly-written villain as he demands their valuables.

She does not see how her teachers are watching them all so closely, waiting to see if - and when - these genteel young ladies will break into undignified behavior unbefitting of their station. She does not see the examination being given to all of them.

Instead all she can think about is how her bag has her lucky shinty stick. About how maybe, just maybe, a girl could get the praise of her classmates instead of their scorn.

She will break several ribs, two arms, and a leg before she is done. She will be immediately expelled and turned out on the street. But for right now, sweetling…

A girl starts and does not know how to stop.

\--

Oh, sweetling, we wish we could tell you that Ul’dah’s justice depended on more than a heavy coinpurse.

A girl’s punishment for smuggling somnus, no matter how she protests her innocence, has to be given out properly. But did you know, sweetling, that a boat’s worth of wealth in Limsa Lominsa cannot even form a good enough bribe in Ul’dah? Nald’thal has a strange sense of economy, don’t you think?

\--

A girl is interrupted as she promises to come visit.

She does not quite know how to hold herself in her regular clothes. Her hands forgot so quickly what to do, after just a few years wearing a prison uniform.

The most guilty woman in the prison interrupts her gently. The lalafell knows what she has done and is proud of it. Not shirking from punishment, but also not pretending to be wracked with regret. And yet she has been the safe harbor for the most innocent girl in all of the cells. A girl thinks that lalafellin hands seem so out of proportion, trying to comfortingly touch her arm to emphasize her point.

A girl is told that she, with all their love, had better walk out of that place and never look back. A girl is told firmly that she is too good to be here, and especially, too good to come back again. 

A girl is told to go and make them all proud.

A girl doesn’t say she is not sure how to do that.

\--

A girl staggers in and falls onto her bed before she even takes her boots off.

Her fingers and feet are full of blisters. She aches in ways she never knew she could. They call it a galley kitchen at the Bismarck, she thinks, not for its size or layout, but for how everyone is expected to snap to just as a good crew would. You run to the powderkeg, you run to the cellar, you hoist the mainsail, you chop another onion, sir yes sir right away sir!

She knows she will have to do it all again tomorrow, so she gives herself a pep-talk to push off her boots, at least, and maybe change into something looser to sleep. She admonishes herself gently about how she must be at her best. There are so many people who have invested in her, and she  _ must _ show them that their faith is not misplaced, no matter how much she feels like it has been. But as soon as she closes her eyes, all the anxiety melts away. She never has nightmares these days. How could she have nightmares when she is so busy learning?

A girl dreams of the most perfect chocolate souffle.

\--

A girl institutes a new policy, as soon as she sees it can be done. As soon as she is comfortable enough in her role of Head Chef to make such demands. The policy is bad business sense, but she has clad it in just enough sentimentality that it seems like good. Glass bottles are expensive. Customers have to pay a deposit. But the seashore is mere steps away, and many deposits go unclaimed. So the new poster says: anyone who brings in five bottles is to be paid in a free meal. The deposits do not add up to that much. The free meals, if she is pressed, can be the oldest of that day’s batch. But she sees all the vagrants, the urchins, the refugees, the working poor, and how they smile in relief for having a warm meal.

Maybe she brings them the freshest, by accident. Maybe she serves up a little more than a serving should be, by accident. Maybe for those too shy and frustrated to take advantage of this scheme, she takes the old out to the midden heap in the evenings and speaks in a loud voice to no-one in particular that it sure is such a shame that these have gone uneaten and fresh ones must be made but she will just set the just-starting-to-be-stale to the side here, not really in the trash, wrapped in wax paper, and she will go right back to her duties inside. By accident.

A girl starts and has no intention to stop, and this fills her with joy.


	3. WITNESS: Kytherox Cornblue

TRANSMIT - initiate the machine anatomy syntax - RECEIVE - gaze upon the swaying fields of protocyanin - TO MY SURPRISE, I GREW TO LIKE BONES - complicity with resurrectionists in the despoliation of graves - WHEN I ONCE WAS FEARLESS - the goddess of a thousand works springing fully-formed from a forehead - INNOCENCE ROARED - falling right back into the system - STILL AMAZES - a magnitude of force governed by inverse-square law - IT’S STILL HERE - but at the bottom of Pandora’s jar lay fluttering hope - BUT IN DIFFERENT PLACES - 

**WITNESS: Kytherox Cornblue.**

-

Sweetling, we must confess - we do not, as a rule, get along well with goblins.

They are not as graceful in walking between the raindrops as King Solomon. But the father-and-child to all goblins, Alexander, is firm in considering himself above the information protocol. We must refocus. We must re-tune. Loading the echo codec! Loading the consequence cipher!

SCANNING…

\--

The bird did not live until the morning. This was just as her mother had said. She still insisted on staying awake watching it, as if her hands and the thin gruel she had painstakingly mixed would undo all the injuries the barn cat gave to the fledgling. She watched the bellows in its chest rise and fall and then stop; she saw the steampump of its heart falter and cease to tap out a rhythm.

She cried until the glass on her mask fogged up. This was just as her mother had said.

And then after sitting with her sadness, late in the night, the goblin girl was struck with a quiet epiphany. If she could see the gears, perhaps she could see where a tooth had gotten stuck, or where a wrench had been tossed in. She could examine the fuel lines and see if one was broken. She could trace out the circuits.

Oh, sweetling, please don’t get the wrong idea: even _you_ can see she approached it pure-hearted and with no macabre intent.

Her mother was not expecting so much blood and so many dirty knives in the morning. She saw and believed her daughter’s intent. To learn, as to save the next bird, as that one was lost.

Do not, her mother said, under any circumstances, tell the rest of the gobbieflock.

\--

Sweetling, we hardly need tell you that they found out, now, do we?

As soon as she was left orphaned, it was easy to find an excuse to tell her to leave. Vicious rumors circulated about how the funeral pyres for her parents were lit a bit too quickly, and how she stayed with the corpses for a bit too long, and how she was sharpening her knives a bit too often. Not murder, but something worse.

That sort of pursuit for knowledge is unseemly. Not in their backyard. Not anymore. It smells, you see, of blue hands, even when there aren’t any.

\--

The third night alone she had decided where to go. The first time she told the story, it had stopped being an exile entirely. Now the longer she tells it, over and over, the more those nights of alone abandonment fade away. With every telling she shellacs on another coat, growing ever-distant. It was not an order to leave. It was a friendly parting. It was not aimless wandering. It was footsteps with purpose. It was not rejection. It was hearing a calling.

It was not injury, it was destiny.

She would flow as the river bearing her God’s name, chasing wisdom like water to its source. Idyllshire was not her place of last resort - oh, no, sweetling. It was her place of pilgrimage.

\--

“You realize,” the greying lalafell marauder grumbles (with his voice that seems too deep for his face), “that they call me Bezoar not because I’ve any talent for poison-curing, but because the dragons tend to want to swallow me, aye?”

The goblin thinks on this. It was, indeed, unexpected. But there was still information to learn! Could he, perhaps, tell her if he saw anything on his way? Any clue of what dragons were made of?

He does not expect that. We know him well, sweetling. And we see how he groans from the depths of his soul to look up at the night sky, letting it all out as a sigh. The Gods, you see, have a sense of irony: this lalafell loses one daughter in Ala Mhigo, and yet after years of wandering, cannot seem to keep from gaining more daughters despite himself.

Well. A miqo’te, an elf, and now a goblin. Fair enough, he thinks: at least he can look this one in the face without straining his neck.

\--

“It’s just a weed,” the runaway noblewoman from Ishgard says with a laugh. “Cornflower grows easily around these parts. My nanny used to make me take tea made from it every night; she said it prevents colic. There you go, eh? It’s medicinal. Makes the perfect crown for you.”

It is nonetheless the most beautiful thing the goblin has ever seen. She has found the adventurer’s life easier than she thought, but it is hard, among non-goblins. Sometimes she rushes and then has to go back and untangle her words for them. Sometimes she confuses them and befuddles them. Even as they depend on her to mend their hurts, she has always felt a little separate, a little alone.

But the flower crown of knotted weeds on her head feels like home.

“Cornblue’s a good color for you,” the elezen says, grinning. “I had a dress made in that color for a ball, once. And I hated the thing. But it suits you, I think!”

The word makes her heart sing like a steamwhistle cheerfully howling out that the engines are running swiftly. In the middle of the night, while the rest talk strategy around the campfire, she lays in her sleeping bag and whispers into her mask. Cornblue. Cornblue. Yes, that is her. That is what she has always been.

\--

E-Sumi-Yan vibrates, sweetling, at a frequency that is easy to spot. Every padjal walks so obviously through time that we bet even  _ you _ could take note of them, even while blindfolded, with the barest knowledge of wisdom-honey syntax. They glimmer and shine so brashly. Can you blame us for finding an easy foothold?

There is a letter. It is not the warmest of introductions. Nothing that starts TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN ever will be. But it was enough to get this member of the beast tribes in his door. She does not fit in Gridania. She sticks out like a sore thumb. The gaze of every hearer in the hall is boring into her with white-hot heat. They are all waiting - expecting - for him to toss her out.

But the spirits aren’t.

He takes a breath. He has been teaching for many decades - don’t, sweetling, ever be fooled by those baby-smooth cheeks - and he knows what a problem student looks like. This one is too enthusiastic. It is a special kind of pain in the arse. But what the wood wills…

“Welcome to the conjurer’s guild, Kytherox Cornblue. We’re happy to accept you as a student.”


	4. WITNESS: Davalia Thousandfoe

TRANSMIT - tune to the lapine midnight frequency of Inlé - RECEIVE - observe the epiphyte fern making do as it must - PROTECT YOUR LANGUAGE - stand each magical stave straight to snare the power of the crossroads - START YOUR OWN CURRENCY - for the fishing boats only survived under the auspices of Vigra, of Hessa, of Hitra - RAISE YOUR OWN FLAG - shot with a silver bullet, under a new moon, in a graveyard, and only the left hind to be lucky - TEAR OFF THEIR BLINDFOLD - wild justice that putteth the law out of office - OPEN THEIR EYES - winged daughter of justice, dark-faced goddess, daughter of Justice - WITH A FLAG AND A TRUMPET - here they sang about tomorrow and tomorrow never came - GO TO YOUR HIGHEST MOUNTAIN - you are taken into life’s severest confidence - HIGHER, HIGHER - and when they catch you, they will kill you - JUSTICE - but first they must catch you - DON’T LET THEM DO THAT TO YOU! - 

**WITNESS: Davalia Thousandfoe.**

\--

In our experience - generally speaking, of course, sweetling - there are two types who make lists of identifying marks: lawmen, and corpse-tenders. There is much overlap these days, so the line between gets quite blurry. Yet, still, two types. One to find to punish, and one to find to put in the right grave.

Davalia knows which will come for her. Do you, sweetling?

SCANNING… Record number 01197746. ACCESSING… Garlean Security Clearance 2 required. ...Security signature accepted. ACCESSING…

File under: Lea Monde Prefecture. File under: Presume armed and dangerous. File under: Kill-on-sight. File under: aliases include Black Rabbit, Davi, Murderess of Lea Monde.

This is going to take awhile, going on like this. Fast-forward! Control-F to Find! Heading number five: Identifying Marks! ACCESSING…

-

FACIAL TATTOOS. GREY-WHITE. TRADITIONAL DESIGN.

Her mother had asked her if she was sure three times. Three is a number that vibrates most pleasantly, and so the third assent rang out with a finality. The tattoo artist was a venerable woman, but with hands that did not shake, not even as she tapped each bladetip of pigment into the skin.

She did not even flinch. Not really. She certainly did not cry.

Her mother had squeezed her shoulder and whispered about how she was so proud, her little Davalia so grown up, now.

But later she did cry. She screamed and howled, wild and desperate. Her mother told them all to be brave, and called out. Davalia. Davalia must be the  _ woman _ she knew her to be; grown, sensible, supportive. The Garlean army would be on them at any moment. Their father was there, holding hands with their mother - a rare sight, but one that let them all know this was the last stand of the married couple. They were planning fire and arrows. There was no going back.

Drawing back as a bow-string, to send one’s children forward as an arrow through time -

Davalia was not ready to be as grown as she needed to be. She howled and fought her brother even as he pulled her back. And as she saw the fires burn, even as the siblings all hurried to safety, she wept for her mother - every tear weeping down those pretty tattoos.

-

RIGHT EAR. NOTCH. 5 ILMS FROM BASE.

Her brother seemed so different than he had mere years before, when their father came to take him into the forest as he belonged. Even now he seemed not quite accustomed to being around them anymore. She did not want to think about how they have both grown. She does not want to think of it. But it is there.

It’s a sick repetition of the catastrophe, but now he is not the one dragging her away. He has already taken three solid blows, pock-marked belly being dyed crimson from Garlean bullets.

“Take them and get out of here,” he gasps, barely able to hold himself up. “Go east, I’ll hold them in the caves -”

She opens her mouth and tries to argue, but he interrupts her. His voice is so much more small and scared than he remembers, but there’s a calm to it, a damnable calm, just like their mother, just like their father.

“Davi, hand me my bow. Let me do this for my sisters. For you. For all of you.” And suddenly that bright smile that he always used to taunt her with. “I’ll see you in whatever comes after life, eh? If you don’t have a higher number of Garleans killed than me, I’ll be disappointed!”

A rumble of armaments. The shouting of distant soldiers. No more time for smiles.

A bullet rips by her ear, taking off a chunk; she yelps. 

“Now go on, go!  _ Go! _ ”

This time, she listens.

-

The mere physical is so mundane, don’t you think, sweetling?

This record is half-complete. Let us illuminate for you. The information protocol can see all hurts. Do you think bruises and scars only happen in flesh, and not souls as well? Don’t be so naiive!

SCANNING… RE-FOCUSING… 

-

It takes a certain sort of charisma to hold together a unit of freedom fighters, especially one that runs under your own name. Jaska had the smile for it. Her laugh was too big, too booming, too loud, and it seeped into everyone around her. It was the buoyant tide that rose all boats.

Jaska’s Jumpers. A funny name, don’t you think, sweetling? Doesn’t it sound too frivolous for a group fighting an invasion of their home?

Jaska never thought so. She laughed at it. And that laughter wrapped all of them up, snug and warm as a blanket, the ever-burning embers lighting each fire. She was never serious. Even when up to her elbows in blood, even when laughing at the latest patrol killed. You can hang entire constellations on a half-moon grin, and all her Jumpers did.

She even smiled while telling them off.

“Ahiii-iii,” Jaska whined, the sound of woe stretched like taffy to become light and delightful again. “What am I to do when my best lancer rushes in like this, eh?” A sharp flick to Davalia’s back, just inches away from her stitches. But it was a teasing little motion. One that she couldn’t help but laugh over. “Ssst, don’t laugh, don’t laugh! I’m not nearly done with these bullet wounds. At least you saved your wiggling for after I got the bullets out! What am I to do with you, fíflingur?”

“Don’t call my sister that,” Ljot interrupted from a corner. Ljot, the littlest, the most precious, the one smaller than Davalia in among innumerable sisters.

Davalia told Ljot to go back to reading her book.

It was nice, in a way that Davalia would hold close to her heart. Every one of the peppering of scars across her back was precious in some way. That honey-gold brightness Jaska poured into each cut was worth the pain.

Hope was in such short supply. It was nice to have it stitched in.

“There you go. Now, be more prudent! Or I’ll keep calling you names, the more absurd the better!” And that laugh, that boundless laugh, enough to warm all of them - enough for even Ljot to start laughing along…

\--

An empty hearth is a sort of wound.

It is an absence that aches for warmth, and filled with nothing but cold ashes.

She did not want to admit how much it hurt, even more than burying her eldest sister Roska mere months before. The Succorsap family of six, whittled down to orphans, and then their only brother, now their oldest sister. Just the littlest, the next-to-eldest, and Davalia herself. But now - the Garleans had cornered them. There would be no more Jumping.

Jaska tried to keep her smile on until the very end, even as she told Davalia that this was for the best.

Ljot’s fever would not get better, not with the remedies they could gather. Ljot needed real medicine. Jaska had bargained for that, and peace for the rest of them, besides. Of course it came at a price. It always came at a price. Oh, what is she to do with you, fíflingur, and your sweet naiivete of charging in at the first?

They had to watch her hang. It was part of the aggreement that the Garleans demanded. We can stil hear her final fluttering thoughts, how she was determined to greet death laughing. So many stars hung in the constellation of her smile. But she looked up into the sun, and it dropped off her face, just before the floor dropped out from under her feet and the noose took her, and she could not even manage a rictus snarl -

It’s a vicious ache, an absence of warmth, and no matter how many tears are spilled into it, they will not reignite the ashes.

\--

Years later, she watches the gallows again.

It’s the only time she has to spare. There has to be another job, another bit of manual labor to scrape together more money for medicine. A ghost has come and stolen from them. There was always the sick assumption that her cousin had died, just as her aunt, just as her other cousin, a whole family’s heads on pikes set there by the Garleans. But instead her elder cousin was there, dragged along in gilded chains, set in the gilded cage of courtesan’s clothes. A pet. A captured amusement for a Garlean officer.

ACCESSING… ELISUS REM AEGER.

IDENTIFYING MARKS. CUT ON LEFT CHEEK. FROM ASSAULT ON SUCCORSAP FARM.

The pet confirmed the officer’s intuition. The littlest was spared as she sobbed in her sickbed, soldiers tearing apart the rest of the apartment. The officer declared that money and one life would be payment enough, for now.

Her eldest sister on the gallows, looking for her face in the crowd. She only found Davalia when it was too late. Something close to tears, with an urgency - she started to say her name, to shout  _ Davi _ , but the platform dropped out from under Valdis and all the other criminals of Lea Monde for that week.

She did not have time to cry. There had to be one more job, one more coin to earn, going without food so that she could have another bottle of medicine in her hand for Ljot. She knew this was what Valdis was going to remind her of.

The last sister Davalia had. The littlest. The one she needed to protect.

\--

“Ljot?”

Emptiness is a wound. An echo is a wound.

She knew something was wrong when she opened the door to the apartment. It was too quiet. Her voice was too big in it. Usually Ljot would at least answer with a cough from her sickbed; usually at least she had tended the fire into embers.

Two days without food makes anyone weak, but she still held onto the bottle of medicine with a death grip. She even put it down so carefully on the table, so gentle, not wanting to drop and break such a precious thing.

“...Ljot?”

She knew. Of course she knew. All the neighbors would be too polite to tell her how Ljot had thrashed and sobbed, crying out in pain for the medicine she hadn’t gotten the coin to buy yet. The mess of covers and huddled position told enough. Everything was still, and quiet, and too damnably silent. The sort of silent that swallows up all sound.

A silence is a wound, sweetling.

She tried her best to fill it with something, with anything. She wailed and sobbed and beat her chest, she flung herself to the floor and punched the stone, she wept open-mouthed and tried to call her little sister’s name as if she just screamed loud enough she could force breath and life back into the cold body. The quiet gobbled up it all, and drank deep, no matter what she poured into it.

IDENTIFYING MARKS: SILENCE.

\--

“The Murderess of Lea Monde” is a nice title. It trips well off the tongue. It was the invention of one of the newspapers, and would live on in three plays, one opera, and numerous folk-songs over the five months.

One murder did not seem like a murder at all. The broken shell of who her cousin used to be wept as soon as she recognized Davalia at the door, but she was a pitiful thing, yoked in silks too heavy to bear. Her apologies flowed out of her. It seemed only right to accept them.

“Thank you, Davi, thank you,” she sighed around the knife in her back as they held one another.

\--

“If you kill me, girl,” the Garlean officer chokes out around the knife at his throat, “the whole Empire and its thousands will be your enemies!”

“Then I will have the thousand foes,” she says, and tugs the knife across.

We know, of course, what was really said. How things were screamed. How slurs were spat. Real life does not fit together in storybook forms very often, sweetling.

But these rhythms are pleasant, and it is those beats that the mind clings to. One may even say it is what the mind  _ must _ cling to. Reality is the most cruel oppression for mortals, with its dizzying fractals of data being constantly poured into eyes and ears. You need easy patterns. You need simple slogans. You need villains. You need heroes.

Let it not be said that the Information Protocol does not know when it is a kindness to bowdlerize.

“Then I will have the thousand foes,” she says, and tugs the knife across.

\--

IDENTIFYING MARKS: LEFT THIGH, GASH ABOVE KNEE.

Pax Garleana is a strange religion sometimes, demanding an elaborate ritual of the accused being given a trial and proper punishment. The gallows are hungry. If command in Lea Monde had been smarter, sweetling, they would have just shot her and been done with it.

There are no binds that cannot be defeated. They had meant to march her through the city. First she fought with her teeth, then her legs, and finally with her arms. She left as much blood on them as she had of theirs on her, but she was skillful, and canny, and most of all, did not stop.

Maybe the folk-songs of the Black Rabbit, Murderess of Lea Monde, gained another verse to be sung in whispers in the tenements of Viera.

\--

IDENTIFYING MARKS: LÁSABRJÓTUR. TO BE UNBOUND. TO OPEN A LOCK WITHOUT A KEY. TO LOOSEN FETTERS.

She still limps, but a little bit of pain is not enough to stop her.

There were smiles, once. There was kindness, once. There was family, once. There was a life without pain, once. With every step those times become more and more distant.

MAY ALL THE DEMONS TAKE THE BOLT, AND PULL SO THAT THE DEVIL WILL SQUEAL.

\--

Limsa Lominsa is a long way from Lea Monde. It’s even a long way from Kugane, where it took two and a half days for the Garleans milling around their consulate to recognize her and start staring, knowing that anything more than white-hot gaze would be dealt with harshly. Here, nobody knows her. That is a relief. She is tired, and the city is so big, and there is too much water to be a comfort. It has been months of hard tack and tepid water with the scum scooped off the top.

As soon as she smells the fresh bread, her stomach clenches, and she steels herself against it. The roegadyn closing up the shop notices her trying to grit her teeth and keep on walking.

“I’ve got to throw these out to make fresh every morning,” she says. “But if you wanted one, I’m going to put them here -”

She adamantly denies it. She’s willing to work for her food. She  _ will _ work for her food. She’s not going to shirk work -

“Well, then, do you know how to wash dishes?”

She blinks. It has been a long time since she washed dishes, but she says she remembers. Surely her fingers do, deep under the callouses of holding her lance.

The woman smiles. “Good, because Leeann had to leave early, and I have a very stubborn casserole pan I’m soaking. What if you help me with that while I finish closing, and your payment is dinner?”

She thinks on this. And she finds it agreeable.

The roegadyn chef is very easy to talk to. Even easier to listen to. Davalia knows so much more about Limsa Lominsa by the end of the night, and has a full stomach as well - something which she hasn’t truly had for quite a long time. It’s foolish to weigh yourself down when you know you may have to run at any instant, after all.

In the morning, after she takes up the offer of sleeping on the couch in the tearoom, she meets the owner of the cafe. The mi’qote woman has a big laugh and a bigger smile that seems to barely fit on her face. It is a half-moon grin that you can hang constellations on. She fills up the room and lifts everyone up with her.

Something within Davalia relaxes.

IDENTIFYING MARKS: A WILLINGNESS TO STAY, FOR NOW.


End file.
